


The Bite Whore

by Hello_Spikey



Series: Bitten, Bought, and Soulled [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-20
Updated: 2007-10-24
Packaged: 2019-06-11 04:27:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15307473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Buffy needs money. Spike wants to get it for her. After a few failed attempts at legitimate employment, they come up with a less savory, but not totally immoral, revenue stream.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamsofspike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofspike/gifts).



> This starts just before the episode "As You Were". As always, bits from episodes are used from memory with mangling (and editing to fit my own personal worldview!) This first installment is more PG-15 than anything, but next will get a tad more... yeah.
> 
> (I know the request said 'early season 6' but I am constitutionally incapable of writing season six before "Wrecked".)

“I can get you money!” Spike leaned forward as though he could push his reasoning into her.

Buffy shook her head. The manager stepped into her peripheral vision. Oh great, let’s have the undead pseudo-boyfriend kicked out. Buffy clenched her jaw. “Order something.”

Spike’s shoulders fell and he smiled. “Haven’t got any money.” He turned on one boot heel and strode out the side door.

Buffy wasn’t surprised to find him waiting by the employees entrance when her break came. Without a word he picked her up and pressed her against the brick wall, lips working on her neck. “How long do you have for your Spike-break?” His lips curled against her skin.

“Twenty minutes,” Buffy said. It felt good, not being on her feet, having her back supported. How was that for fast food killing the soul? She’s getting macked on and all she can think is how wonderful it was to sit.  
He massaged her legs – that felt heavenly – and his lips were moving to the other side of her neck, which was good because her right side was all goose-bumpy and it didn’t do to be lopsided…

Buffy groaned. “Wait… wait… serious talk.”

Spike pulled away with a scowl. “Eighteen minutes, Buffy.”

“Two seconds. Question and answer. Well,” She bit her lip. “Demand and answer. You are NOT going to go do something stupid, illegal, immoral, or… or, well, stupid to get me money.”

Spike couldn’t help but smile as she raised her eyebrows expectantly. The little pink tip of his tongue came out to touch his teeth in that sexy way of his. “If I do you gonna punish me?”

“Serious talk, Spike!”

He rolled his eyes. “’M only agreeing because we have fifteen precious minutes ticking by. Yes, Slayer, I will not do anything stupid et cetera et cetera.”

“No gambling. Fencing. Or… or… god I don’t even want to think of what you’d come up with.”

Spike tilted his head, his eyes narrowed.

“What?” Buffy frowned.

“You just tacitly agreed to allow me to provide for you.”

“What?”

Spike smiled broadly. “That makes this… a relationship!”

“Ew! No! Let me down.”

Instead he leaned in and nuzzled her cheek. “You’re telling me how NOT to get money means there are ways TO get you money. You’re going to let me provide for you.” He nipped at her ear teasingly.

Buffy pushed him away. She winced as her feet impacted the ground, feeling every moment of the past four hours of standing on a linoleum-coated concrete floor. Still, she straightened and glared at the vampire who was just regaining his feet. “What is all this ‘provider’ business? It’s so last century.”

“I’m ‘so last century’,” Spike replied, flicking his duster to lie properly on his shoulders.

“You want to help out? Get a job.”

“Done,” Spike said.

“Really?” Buffy crossed her arms. “I say ‘get a job’ and you say ‘done’?”

Spike dug his hands into his pockets and sauntered back to her. “Done. I’ll take the first job I find that’ll hire a vampire… oops, foreign vampire with no identification, previous work history or home address. That isn’t immoral. And seeing as how I have a very useful hundred-year-out-of-date degree in classics, I’m sure they’ll be beating down my door.”

Buffy raised one eyebrow. “You have a degree? Great. I am officially the most pathetic person on the planet.”

“Hey,” he ran his hands over her arms. “You’re not. You’re strong.” He leaned in and she twisted away.

“Break’s over,” she said.

***

Spike tackled looking for a job with all the verve of a grail-quest. He applied everywhere in town that was open at night – not a long list on a hellmouth. He even enjoyed making up fictional work histories and educational credentials. Not surprisingly, he was not asked to any interviews. At least if Dawn could be believed, seeing as how he had to give the Summers’ as his phone number.

He almost considered applying at the Doublemeat Palace. Almost. He didn’t love Buffy that much. Didn’t love EXISTENCE that much. He’d sooner get himself a soul, gel his hair up and start listening to Manilow.

Willy did not respond well to his suggestion of working as a bouncer.

“No. No. I can’t say enough ‘no’s! The regulars hate you!”

“Because I beat them up. But that’s the brilliant part! Paid to be menacing! It’s what I do best.”

“And what about my human customers?” Willy threw down his wash-cloth. “Witches, wizards, warlocks? No thanks. Besides, you wanna tell Tony I’m giving his job to you?”

Spike looked over at the troll that stood by the door, obviously listening in and obviously not pleased. Spike groaned. “You paranoid git, I really need a job. You gotta know something a demon can do for money in this town.”

Willy glanced aside, “Well there’s always suck…”

Willy’s next words resulted in a splitting chip-fire headache, Tony the bouncer feeling more secure in his job, and Willy discovering he could fly – not in that order.

***

Spike walked to Buffy’s work. The Doublemeat Palace shone like a stage at night and so he was just at the edge of the parking lot when he noticed a strange customer – tall, dressed like a bloody special ops character… talking to Buffy… oh soddin’ hell it’s Captain Cardboard! And Buffy was taking off her hat and stepping around the counter to talk to him! She never broke early to talk to Spike!

Like ruddy bleedin’ soccer moms in hell he was letting G.I. Git hone in on his girl. Spike hurried to step into their path. “Well if it isn’t the vamp-whore-snack back from Belize.”

Riley grimaced. “Spike,” he said, half greeting, half expletive.

“Spike, we don’t have time for macho posturing,” Buffy said. “We’re tracking a dangerous demon.”

“I can do that,” Spike said.

“No, you really can’t,” Riley said, pushing past him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you still super soldier? Because last time I checked, preternatural strength here!”

Riley turned on his heel and popped Spike a clean blow to the nose.

“Riley!” Buffy grabbed his arm as he drew it back.

“Seemed quicker,” Riley said. “You want to do the evil undead banter? Fine. I have a mission to complete.”

***

Twenty minutes after being thoroughly convinced he was NOT wanted, Spike found Buffy bursting into his crypt in a state of obvious need.

Whatever had happened with Captain Cardboard it hadn’t been happy time for his slayer.

“Tell me you love me!” she demanded, pressing in to him.

And he was suddenly glad the poofy boyscout was in town.

Her hands were frantic, ripping his clothes off, throwing him against the wall. She needed him. Captain Cardboard could stay! Spike’d give him a room!

Afterwards, lying on a sarcophagus lid, he held her and tried to keep her soft skin from the hard stone. “He’s not worth it. What sort of idiot would ever let go of a woman like you?”

“Ahem!”

Spike sat up and, to his great delight, was greeted with the sight of that very idiot. Captain Cardboard, catching him and the Slayer in post-coital bliss. Had Fantasy Island decided to do a vampire sequel? Victory! Parade! Bloody Brilliant!

“’Ello Riley. Just so you know, this is EXACTLY what it looks like!” He gave Buffy’s shoulders a proprietary squeeze.

“I came here for information, Spike. The suvolte. It laid its eggs. Someone in town is protecting them.”

“Well, you’re too late. Slayer already pumped me for information.” He dropped his chin and his voice for his best lascivious leer. “And other things.”

Sadly, Buffy was already scrambling off the sarcophagus, pulling the sheet around herself. “Spike, you’re a pig.”

“Maybe I should search your crypt,” Riley said, shoulders squared, all challenging and macho, although the affect was somewhat tempered by his pointedly averting his eyes.

Spike smirked, enjoying the discomfort on Riley’s face as he unabashedly displayed his nude self. “Over my cold, undead body.”

“No, thanks, I’ve seen enough of your undead body to last a lifetime.”

Still, there was no satisfying soldier-boy until he’d stomped his way through every part of the crypt, finding no suvolte eggs.

“Well, now, if some people hadn’t decided that I’m completely useless around here,” Spike slipped into his jeans with unnecessary slowness. “I could tell you the name of a bloke contacted me a while back asking for a place to hide some eggs. Or did you think vampires were only good for cheap thrills?”

He buckled his belt smirking at Riley’s barely-controlled rage. “Do you still like to get bit, Jonny boy? Take your time staking vamps, hoping they’ll get one in on you?”

“What. Do. You. Know.” Riley said with affected calm and clenched teeth.

After Spike told him his contact’s name, Riley left in a stiff march of soldier repression. Spike sauntered up to Buffy, sliding an arm around her waist. “Let’s get back to where we were before soldier-boy barged in, eh?” He’d put on his jeans but that was it.

Bare Spike chest and rough denim were two of Buffy’s favorite things to feel, but Buffy pushed away. “You could have told him you had information first thing. Like, before we left the Doublemeat parking lot. Instead of baiting him and acting like the world’s oldest teen-ager.”

“All’s well that ends, luv. Just bein’ the bad boy you know you want me to be.”

“I want good boy. Boys. Damn it. I just want a normal…”

“Keep singing that song, love. Gets funnier every time.”

“Spike! This is serious. I can’t keep doing this.”

“What, because now you’re remembering how good it was with Captain Cardboard? I’m a million times better than him, and I won’t turn my back on you.”

“He has a soul.”

“Yeah. Thank you for reminding me of my little short-coming there. After all, twice a day just isn’t enough. I keep forgetting. Maybe it’s because it isn’t so bloody important.”

Buffy shook her head. “This isn’t that argument. Will you just listen? I’m using you.”

“So?” His smile was completely devoid of understanding. “No complaints here.”

“I’m sorry… William.”

Buffy turned to exit but Spike stopped her. “Pet. Please. You know I’d do anything for you. I’m trying. Yeah? I coulda had those eggs. Thought about it. Paid more than enough to get you out of flipping burgers. But I didn’t. Because you wouldn’t like it.”

“So I’m supposed to give you credit for NOT doing something incredibly stupid? This is the problem. Don’t you get it? If you had a soul, you would complain. You’d care that I’m using you. And you’d know better than to get involved with demon smugglers, not because I wouldn’t like it but because people could get hurt. Spike… it’s killing me. Because I DO know better.”

Their eyes met, and there was finality in her gaze. “I’m ending this.”

“No. Buffy, please, no.” He caught her arm as she tried again to leave. “I know I haven’t been… well, I’ve been asking too much, haven’t I?”

Buffy’s eyes widened. Evidence, again, that the vampire just didn’t get it. “I use you for sex and push you away. How is that asking too much?”

Spike wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, softly, desperately, on the temple, the cheek, the jaw.

She pushed him gently back. He knew how much she loved to see him bare-chested. He was going to kiss his way out of the argument. Again. “That’s cheating,” she said.

“Please, love, just don’t take the one thing I have away from me. Just tell me what you want from me. I’d even kiss Captain Cardboard if it’d make you happy.”

He smiled at her shocked expression. “Lack of conscience isn’t always a bad thing. Not much I wouldn’t do. I’d go bite him and give you the money.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“You deserve more.” He stayed as close as her outspread hands would let him. “Using me? Pet, have you ever once been unclear in your intentions? You gave your life for the soddin’ world, love. You deserve a little pleasure. Wherever you can get it.” He leaned in for a kiss and she turned her head quickly away from it. He sighed. “And it’s my choice, innit? You aren’t using, love. I’m giving.”

“Could you give a little less? Or at least less… enthusiastically?” Her scowl faded into tired resignation. It was close enough to acceptance. Spike smiled.

“Want to give more. Said I’d provide for you. Any day now I’ll get a break. Maybe if I threatened someone they’d hire me.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Or you’ll go bite Riley.” There was the girl he loved. Back from the brink.

He put his arm around her shoulders and this time, she let him. “It’s sort of an empty promise, considering I can’t. Chip.”

“What if someone really wanted you to bite them? I mean… it can’t hurt that much, if people are paying for it?”

“It hurts. Trust me. Killed by vampire. Sort of know this game inside and out.”

Their eyes met, and Buffy’s showed how she knew damn well how it felt to be bitten and he was editing a bit.

“You haven’t tried. You don’t know.”

He pressed his lips to her ear. “I’ll bite you if you want.”

She pushed him back, a slight panic on her face. “Never.”

“How many times have I had you asleep, relaxed, vulnerable in my arms, and not once tried to bite you? I love you.”

“So if you love me, go try. See if Riley will let you bite him. See if you can.”

Spike drew a sharp breath in. This was precisely what he sent Willy flying across the room for even suggesting. Was he really that whipped?

Yes, yes he was.

***

Spike caught up with Riley at the cemetery parking lot, where the latter was loading all sorts of boring soldier-boy equipment into an equally boring soldier-boy SUV.

Spike thought with a shrug that this was going to be easier than he feared. No way the boy scout was even going to entertain the thought.

“What do you want, Spike?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Riley in reply threw a duffle into the back seat and grunted, “Go away, Spike.”

“Do. You. Still. Like. To. Be. Bit.” Spike leaned against the car with a smug grin.

Riley straightened to look down at Spike. “Maybe. Yeah. By a real vampire.”

“Only thing wrong with me ‘s what you lot put in my head.”

“Even if you weren’t toothless, Spike. I’d never want it to be you.”

To Riley’s great shock the vampire visibly relaxed. “Right,” he said. “Well, just thought I’d ask.”

To Spike’s greater shock Riley grabbed his arm as he tried to walk past. “What is this about?”

“Nothin’.” Spike scratched his nose and tried to find something to look at besides the man in front of him. “Buffy and me… we just had a bet, is all. Wondered if the chip would fire or not. But you’re not interested so I’ll be on my merry…”

Riley tightened his grip. “Are you serious? You hate me!”

“No I don’t.” Spike shrugged his arm out of Riley’s grasp. “I think you’re a joyless pillock who probably alphabetizes his sock drawer. Hate would require too strong a feeling between us, yeah?”

Riley squinted. “Yeah,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, at the quiet cemetery behind them.

Spike raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re tempted.”

“It probably won’t work,” Riley said. He started rolling up his right sleeve.

“Bollocks. I’m not taking it out of the arm. We gonna do this, I want neck.”

“You couldn’t reach my neck,” Riley said. “Besides, Sam would notice the wound.”

Spike regarded the clustered scars on Riley’s forearm, following the tracks of major blood vessels. “Whereas on your arm she’s not likely to notice a bleedin’ wolf pack’s been at you.” He knit his brows and stared up until Riley met his gaze. “This is an addict’s arm, you realize.”

“Are you going to do it or not?” Under a façade of indifference there was just a sliver of need.

Spike wet his lips. Let himself notice the pulse, the heat. “Yeah,” he said. “All right. Like falling off a bicycle.” He took hold of Riley’s arm, rotated it in his hands, feeling the blood vessels. Hot, warm, blood. And he really could have it. Maybe. If this worked. He chose his spot carefully, a place not marked, above the elbow. Fledges probably didn’t want to deal with the thicker muscle. Spike let his lips ghost the skin, feeling small hairs prickle and raise. Yeah, this was the spot to try.

“Do it,” Riley ground out through clenched teeth. “I’m not your boyfriend.”

Spike favored him with an eye-roll. He could feel the vein, map its heat as it rose closer to the surface and dipped further away. He let his fangs descend. He pressed them to the flesh, not puncturing, yet, just enjoying that sensation, skin on fang. Felt Riley tense, either in anticipation or frustration at his waiting. Spike slowly pressed through the skin, felt its elastic drag, felt it pop and draw up into his mouth, felt the muscle next, different texture, easier going, then the vein wall, then BLOOD! Sweet, hot, pulsing blood, and a shiver from the body beside his.

You don’t get that from a mug.

Spike felt his own hands shaking. Riley was saying something but he couldn’t pay attention enough to know what it was. He swallowed the first mouthful and dared draw another. The flavor! Anger, frustration, post-battle fatigue, a thousand little spices. Beneath it all a clean purity still untainted. The boy tasted of sunshine and corn. No gluey anti-coagulant, no plastic. Want. Hope. Love. Sweat on the skin so thoughtful, like a salted glass-rim. Perfect.

Spike dug deeper, straining into quivering muscle, felt more than heard the man gasp, and then a warning twinge at the back of his skull, no… he pulled back, licking his lips.

They both stood silent; both looking at the twin holes on Riley’s arm.

Spike took another step back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Fuck,” he said.

Riley looked down, then over his shoulder, then back at his arm. He rolled his sleeve down. “Th… thanks,” he said, shrugging awkwardly he jumped into his SUV and started the engine.

Spike watched the vehicle drive away and repeated to himself, “Fuck.”

***

Buffy was waiting, fully dressed, seated in his comfy chair. She jumped up as soon as Spike walked in. “Oh my god,” she said, “You did it? Right now?”

“Yeah,” Spike said. He ran a hand over his face. “Worked. You were right.”

And for a moment his old Buffy was back. She clapped her hands and did a victory bounce. Spike had to smile. “C’mon, luv, you’re right about things all the time.”

Buffy playfully punched his arm. “I was right. And you could do it again.”

“Pardon?”

“Bite people. You could bite people for money.” She continued on as Spike stared at her with a blank expression. “It makes sense. It’s an actual talent… well, ability, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone, I mean, they’re going to do it anyway so they might as well be safe and you’re safe… AND your grocery bill would go away, which is no small thing. Blood isn’t cheap.”

“Buffy… you… when you were with Riley you didn’t want him to…”

He met her expression. No, of course she didn’t. Because Riley was her boyfriend, not her fuck-buddy. Spike sucked his cheeks in. “Yeah. Whatever. Anything for you, you know that.”

***

After she was gone, he finally came up with words to say. “You see, Slayer,” he said to his turned-off television, “The bite is a sacred thing. It’s death sustaining life. It’s survival and sex and passion all in one act. Riley was one thing because I knew him and I wasn’t… well I wasn’t bleedin’ getting PAID. There are things, pet, you can’t do for money.”

The telly stared stoically back at him, all glass and silence.

“Right,” Spike said. “And that’s what I’ll tell her first thing tomorrow.” He slumped down in his chair.

***

When the time did come, when she came to see him and told him she’d found a client, all he could say is, “Buffy, love, I don’t want to do this.”

“I’m working every double-shift I can. I hardly see Dawn any more and I still can’t meet all the bills,” was her reply.

He took the post-it from her fingers and nodded. “Right. See you when it’s done.”

The address was on the other side of Sunnydale, near the freeway. A dusty, shuttered bungalow with a yard of cacti and dirt. The door was opened by a skinny woman in a red scoop-necked top that showed off her clavicle and the impression of ribs above her pushed-up cleavage. She had thick eyelashes and curled black hair. “You must be Spike,” she said.

He winced, hoping no one was around to actually hear his name. “Yeah.”

She stepped back and waved her hand into the house. Spike shifted his weight. “Have to actually say it, love. Little hand gestures don’t get a vampire past your door.”

“Oh. Is that true, then? Can you… I mean, you can’t just step in here?”

Spike kicked the barrier, let his foot bounce off it a little. “May I come in?”

“Yes, please. You are invited in.”

“Thanks ever so.” Spike stepped over the threshold with a smooth swish of coat and a smirk.

A waft of fear. “I didn’t just let every vampire in town in here, did I?”

“Nah, love, only applies to the vampire what hears it said. And don’t worry, I won’t be coming back here in the night to make off with your kiddies.”

They were in a little brick foyer. Ahead was a kitchen, to the left a living-room. It smelled of stale carpet, cats, and Lysol. Spike hated Lysol. Seemed to be designed purely to make vampire noses itch.

“How… how did you know I have children?”

“Little Tyke’s.” He jerked his thumb at the door. “Toys in the yard.”

“Oh. Right. Um… well…”

For a woman who wanted to be bit by a vampire she wasn’t making it easy.

“Where do you want to do this? Couch?” Spike walked past her and surveyed the dimly-lit interior. Hanging plants. Magazines on a coffee table. A mirror hung with black lace.

He sank into the sagging brown suede sofa. The woman sat next to him, just on the very edge of the seat, knees together, like a virgin at her junior prom. Spike leaned forward. “Just tell me what… well, where you want me to bite you.”

Her hands fluttered in her lap. “I… I mean. You won’t.”

“Me being here pretty much negates that assumption, pet.”

“Well, before, they always said they wouldn’t. It wasn’t allowed. And that’s what it always is in movies, you know?” Her hand fluttered over her collar. “The neck.”

Spike slid closer on the couch, so he was nearly directly behind her. He gently pulled the woman’s hairspray-sticky hair away from her nape. “Brothel vamps are probably worried their little fledgelings won’t be able to control themselves. Blood flows fast up here. Will be over quick.” He brushed the curve of her neck with the backs of his fingernails.

She shivered. “Well, that’s what I want. What your friend said… she said you would.”

Spike smiled tightly and lowered his mouth to her neck. The skin smelled of talc and clay – make-up. The daft bint had put make-up on her very neck. He licked his thumb and rubbed it over the point he wanted to bite. Maybe she’d think it was foreplay.

She pulled away from him. “Wait.”

Spike bit back his irritation. “What?”

She turned around. “Not like that. I want to see you.”

Right. Spike looked forlornly at the newly cleaned patch of her neck. He was a left-biter, damn it. Would feel odd bending his head the other way. Which was worse? Make-up on the fangs or bending the other way?

He was stopped in his consideration by the woman touching his cheek. “You’re very handsome,” she said.

“About to get less so, luv. Just…”

“Would you kiss me? I mean, before? I mean, right now?”

Spike rolled his lips inward. “No, luv. I won’t. I got a girl.”

Her face collapsed. “Oh.”

“This isn’t ‘Dark Shadows’, sweet. Not here to romance you, just to eat you.” He rubbed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Now, don’t look like that. ‘S a fantasy. Right?”

She nodded, shakily.

He tilted his head to the right and let his fangs graze lengthwise on her skin, feeling the blood rushing up to meet them. “Just close your eyes,” he spoke with his lips pressed to her skin. He did kiss her, just a little peck over the artery he’d selected. “Think of Barnabas Collins.” The woman was aroused, he could smell it, and her hands were running up and down his biceps like she was shopping for a pair of her own.

Her breathing was hitched, her shoulders shaking, and when he finally slipped into her skin, her blood tasted of desperation and loneliness.

Spike kept one hand on the envelope in his pocket all the way back to Buffy’s house. He handed it over to her in the kitchen. She was washing dishes. She flicked water from her fingers, wiped her hands on her jeans, and took the envelope. He watched her count the money.

“The price of my dignity.” Spike smiled tightly. “You over-charged.”

She got halfway through her eye-roll when Dawn bounced into the room.

Buffy hurriedly tucked the envelope in her back pocket. Dawn went straight to the fridge. “I’m going to Tara’s,” she said, with her head deep in the crisper.

Dawn came up with a carrot and brandished it disturbingly like a stake. “Hi, Spike.”

“Niblet.”

“Spike’s here to… talk about slaying.” Buffy blurted.

Dawn was already just a sway of hair retreating down the hall.

Spike put his hands on Buffy’s waist, ignoring her light slaps of protest. “So your dirty little secret has a dirty little secret.” He kissed her jaw.

“Spike, my hands are wet.”

“The dirty cunt actually asked me to kiss her. Can you believe that?” He lowered his voice an octave, “Does it make you jealous?”

Buffy twisted out of his grasp, her arms in front of her like a surgeon waiting for gloves. “Someone could walk right in here!”

He took her wet hands and kissed the fingertips. The water made the whorls of her fingerprints more pronounced, more textured. “Told her I’m yours. All yours.”

She twisted away. “Willow is in the house,” she hissed. “Try to behave yourself.”

“Just ate. I’m horny.”

Which was, as usual, the worst thing he could have said, and he realized it only after the words were free from his mouth and Buffy was backing away from him with an outraged glare.

“Buffy…”

“You’re disgusting!”

He sighed. “Pet, I’m sorry. It’s the blood… another reason we shouldn’t do this. What’s it gonna do, getting me all used to the good stuff again when the only way I can get it…”

“Is what? From willing victims? Does that take the ‘spice’ out of it?” Buffy made air quotes with too-quick motions that threatened to continue into violence.

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. Buffy…”

She stormed out of the room. He caught up to her in the hallway and grabbed her bicep. She spun around, her other fist raised to strike.

Spike lifted his chin. “You gonna hit me then, luv?”

She lowered her fist and wrenched her arm loose from his grip. Without a word she stomped up the stairs and out of sight.

Spike stuck his hands in his pockets, shrugged, and let himself out.

***

Buffy sat at her computer – which was actually Willow’s old computer, handed down for “Dawnie’s education” when Willow got the new iBook. Apparently, these days, high school required them. Buffy felt old in computer-years. Hadn’t she been in high school just three years ago?

She had meant to take a shower and go to bed, not letting Spike and his confusing Spike-ness stay on her mind. But instead she was checking her messages, because of him.

Not because of that much-needed money in her pocket, a drop of water in a big empty bucket of dept. But such a drop! She almost felt light-headed. A few minutes online, a post-it, and bam! Spike handed over as much as she’d make in several hours flipping burgers.

It made those burger-flipping hours feel even more meaningless, and Buffy had not thought that possible. Was this all she was worth? All those study sessions, no credit for slaying, attempting to skim through scary old watcher books. She should have a master’s degree in slayage.

It was too much to hope that her post on the vampire fan club website had gotten a second response. But it had. She felt a little thread of relief, clicking on the link to read.

“Do you have a picture?” was all it said.

Buffy bit her lip. She’d just tell them ‘no’…

She clicked reply and stared at the blinking cursor. She stood up and pulled out a cardboard box from under the desk. Unsorted pictures. She remembered, there was at least one with Spike… she remembered complaining about it and tossing it in the ‘never in the album’ pile.

She found two. One she didn’t recognize. It was a party or something, in the dinning room. Everyone was in black. There were flowers. Spike was leaning against the wall, not looking at the camera, behind a wan-looking Dawn. Oh god. This was her wake.

Buffy tried to put the photo down twice. But it was the first she’d found of Spike and… it was also compelling. I was dead when this was taken. It was like cheating god to even see it.

The other photo was the one she remembered. Dawn had taken it, in the middle of a roll of perfectly good pictures of holidays and birthdays. It was washed out, too much flash, but Spike was smiling, his mouth open in what no doubt was some sort of joking threat to the girl with the camera as he stalked toward her from a background completely lost to black.

Buffy wasn’t sure he looked his best smiling. She set the picture down next to the other one, where his turned-away face accentuated his devastating cheekbones.

Sad but sexy vamp, or smiling but washed-out vamp?

Her hand hesitated over both. She picked up the smiling picture and set it on the scanner. She couldn’t share the funeral picture, she just couldn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

The blood was getting to him: the adrenaline, maybe, or something more magic and less scientific. Spike was sleeping less and when he was awake, he couldn’t keep still. Like his body was convinced the supply of human blood would stop again and it didn’t want to miss a drop.

“Today. I’m telling her today, ‘Buffy, love, I’m glad to help you out, but not this way. This has got to stop before it drives me batty.’” He paced his crypt, rehearsing his lines to the candelabra and the window-panes. Every day, the same resolution, and every day he caved. He’d see Buffy and she’d look tired and unhappy and he couldn’t add to that. Or else he wouldn’t see her at all.

He took even more risks with the sunlight, darting out as soon as he could to get to Buffy’s, hoping to catch her before she left for the evening shift, because if he didn’t catch her then he was NEVER going to break it off.

But most times, no matter how early he took to the sewers, Buffy would have already left and he’d meet Willow, or worse, Dawn.

Willow was better because she didn’t question why Spike brought envelopes for Buffy and collected notes left for him. She just smiled, even gave him a cheery, “Hi, Spike!” Once she even said, “It’s really sweet how you’re helping Buffy out. I mean… I know you haven’t got a chance in heck of her ever dating you, and yet you keep trying and it’s sweet. To try. I mean. I try. I have new-found respect for the unrequited thing.”

“I’m doing this for the Niblet,” he lied. “How is she?”

Dawn was a subject he could get Willow to talk about that wasn’t magic or Tara. Red was feeling lonely since Glinda moved out. So they talked about Dawn, or about the latest demon activity, and he wondered if she saw his hands shaking. He felt like an addict getting a hit.

The irony was, he was the product, wasn’t he? Could the product be an addict as well?

But Willow was too caught up in her own misery to notice. Dawn DID ask questions. “And what will I find in here if it accidentally passes through some steam over the stove and falls open?” She held the envelope to her cheek and waggled it a bit.

“Money. The exact amount of which your sister knows. Don’t get sneaky, Niblet.”

Dawn tapped the envelope. “Hrm… but she’d be far more likely to blame the evil, soulless vampire than her sweet little sister who needs a new jacket, won’t she?”

“Platelet. Don’t. That’s rent money for the roof over your head.”

Dawn turned on her heel and dropped the envelope in the little wicker basket by the door where they kept mail. “You’re up to something shady. And Buffy’s in on it.” She picked up the thinner envelope with “Spike” written on it in her older sister’s loopy handwriting. She hefted it like she was testing its weight. “Addresses and names and times. Why does Buffy give you addresses, names, and times, and you give her money?”

Spike snatched the envelope from her. “That’s not your business. You want me to tell the slayer you’ve been reading her private papers?”

“Go right ahead. Then maybe she’ll actually notice I still exist.”

“Your sister’s really busy, Bit. She’s working herself half to death and slaying on top of it. You know she cares about you.”

Dawn tossed her shiny hair over her shoulder. “Seems like you’re the busy one.”

“Bit…”

“Oh stop with the stupid pet names! You haven’t cared about me since you got your precious Buffy back. Did you ever care? Was I ever anything more than a way to get to her?”

He opened his mouth to protest that he’d taken care of her when Buffy was dead and buried, hadn’t he? But they don’t talk about that time. He closed his mouth and opened it again. “Wasn’t in love with Buffy when I let you escape on parent-teacher night. Remember? You with the Batz Maru backpack? Could easily have eaten you but I didn't.”

“Manufactured memory, jerk. For all I know that wasn’t what you would have really done. The monks just needed me to survive.”

Spike squinted at her. “’Course it’s what I’d’ve done. Our memories are what we’d have done. Always liked you.”

“You think you’ve always liked me.”

“Always liked you.” He grabbed her arm, wincing as the chip set off a small warning. “Liked the rebel in you. Which is what’s making you read your sisters mail and behave like a brat, so I guess I’m getting what I asked for.”

Dawn jerked her arm from his grasp. “Tell me where the money comes from.”

"I run a… um… delivery service. Yeah.” Dawn rolled her eyes. The eye-roll that said, “How can a century-old vampire be such a crap liar?” Spike sighed. “I’ll be back tomorrow night. We’ll talk then, yeah?”

“Why not now?”

He held up his envelope. “Because I have a list of names and addresses to read, don’t I? Now go… do your homework or something. We’ll talk. Tomorrow. Promise.”

***

The next evening, Buffy was at the door, and he almost fell over with relief. Before she even opened her mouth, Spike pulled her out onto the porch. “Dawn’s suspicious.”

Buffy blinked. “And hello to you too.”

“I’m serious, love. She gave me the third degree yesterday. She wants to know what’s with the envelopes.”

“Um… is it a big secret?”

Spike’s jaw dropped open.

Buffy shrugged. “She wants to know, tell her. But if she knows you’re leaving money, you should write down the amounts. Not that I don’t trust her, I just… okay, I don’t trust her.”

Spike forced himself to close his mouth. “Buffy. Love. I don’t want Lil’ Bit to know.”

“Over-dramatic vampire. It’s not like you’re sleeping with people.”

It kind of is, he thought.

Buffy held out her envelope. He fished the one with the money out of his back jeans pocket and decided to change the subject. “Not working the afternoon shift today?”

“Nope. We’ve almost paid for the full-copper re-pipe and I celebrated by telling the boss no more doubles.” She snatched the money envelope from his fingers.

“So.” He rubbed the back of his head. “If you’re all caught up and all there’s no reason to…”

“Ugh. Hardly caught up. With the funeral bills and the home repairs and all the money we owe Xander, I don’t think we’ll ever be caught up.”

“What I mean, Buffy, is, I can’t look for a real job, can I, if I’m busy…”

She pressed the named envelope into his palm. “Just take the names and go. I’m not in the mood to talk about all this.”

Spike pulled out his ace card. The phrase that, of late, could magically make a Buffy happy to stay and talk. “How’re your feet?”

She sighed and dropped into the porch-swing. “You have no idea. You’d think slayer healing would apply to arches.”

Spike sat down next to her feet and cupped one calf through her jeans. He kissed her knee. “Poor darling tootsies,” he said, starting to knead her calf. He smiled up at her. Buffy never refused foot-rubs. As crazy as their relationship had gotten, here was where he felt most in control – at her feet, giving her what she needed until she couldn’t admit she didn’t want it any more. She groaned and leaned back, letting the swing rock gently as he eased her shoes off and set her feet on his thigh.

“You have… four hours to stop doing that,” Buffy said, and bit back a moan. His strong thumbs forced the tension from her arches and sent tingles down to her toes, reminding her of other ways his nimble hands could be brought into good use.

“So beautiful when you give in to your body,” Spike purred.

Someone jogged up the wooden porch steps. Buffy kicked away from Spike, who ended up against the wall of the house with an indignant expression while she scrambled to put her shoes back on.

“Well, isn’t this not a surprise,” Dawn dropped her backpack next to the door. “Let me guess… muscle cramp again? Or did Buffy have something in her eye?”

Spike tried to summon up some dignity as he stood. “Well, got to go, Slayer.”

“Oh no.” Dawn set her fists on her hips. “You promised me we’d talk.”

Spike found himself in the undignified position of trying to step around Dawn, who kept moving to block his way.

Buffy finished putting her shoes back on and stood. “Dawnie, let Spike go. He has somewhere to be. Spike? You’ll come back tonight? You know, after?”

Spike felt the clouds part and angels sing a chorus. Buffy was asking him to come back! He nodded. “Sure, luv. Be back as soon as I can.”

“Wait a minute, we aren’t finished here, mister!” Dawn shook a finger.

Spike jumped over the porch railing and beat a hasty retreat, hearing Dawn’s cry after him, “Oh you are NOT getting off that easy!”

At the end of the block he slowed his steps. Master vampires did NOT run away from little girls. Nope. This was more of a… strategic retreat. From a little girl.

He slid a finger under the flap on the envelope Buffy had given him. “Let’s see who’re tonight’s lucky appetizers,” he said, and unfolded the paper inside. There were three appointments, this time. Slayer must have some hidden pimping talent. She’d been keeping him busy.

The first address was for a warehouse by the docks, which they’d used before for more discretion-minded clients. “Chuck” was the name, which made Spike groan, immediately picturing some thick-headed Neanderthal. No good could come of a man who willingly called himself “Chuck”.

And he wondered what Dawn had meant with that “not a surprise” crack.

The warehouse was empty, as expected, smelling of dust and the sour tang of unwashed humanity. Spike was a little early for the appointment so he kicked around and smoked. There was a beat-up old sofa propped up on phonebooks in one corner. It smelled of rat droppings. Christ, he didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary.

He tried to look nonplused when the broken alleyway door creaked open, admitting a sliver of sodium light and a man who was, presumably, Chuck. He had a narrow face, a high forehead and long black hair. He wore a scuffed leather jacket adorned with chains.

So, not so much the Neanderthal.

“Hello, Chuckie,” Spike said, and turned to face him with a broad stance. “Come to meet the big bad?”

Chuck scowled. “You Spike?”

“You expecting some other vampire? Come on over here or are you afraid I’ll bite you?” He smirked at his own joke.

Chuck seemed immune to humor. He walked right into a conversational distance and, without removing his hands from his pockets, said; “I want you on your knees.”

Spike raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t work that way. Still a vampire here, not your doxy. You hand over the cash and I’ll bite you. Arm, neck, shoulder, chest. That’s where I’m willing to go. So pick your spot and have a seat.” He gestured at the couch.

There was a little waft of apprehension from the guy. He obviously hadn’t expected that. Maybe the brothel vamps were more of a mind to be submissive. The thought set Spike’s teeth on edge. When this was done he’d find some brothels and dust the lot of them for smearing the image of vampires everywhere.

But Chuck shrugged and said, “Whatever,” and finally pulled his hands out of his pockets. He had leather wrist-bands and black x’s tattoed on the backs of his hands. He kicked the couch, letting off a little cloud of dust, before throwing himself down into it with an abandon the filthy piece of furnishing did not warrant. But then, humans couldn’t smell so well.

Spike was careful to keep his duster between himself and the ratty cushion. “You look like a neck man,” he said.

Chuck’s only response was to pull his hair out of the way with one hand.

Well, what did he expect? Witty conversation? Spike sucked back saliva and tried not to look too eager as he shifted into game face.

Chuck’s skin was clammy, not salty, and a little soft for a guy. Spike kept the physical contact minimal; he steadied himself with a hand on the back of the couch and leaned in so his fangs were the first part of him to touch. Careful, neat, he slid in. The blood was hot, of course, hot and alive and clean – overall better than Chuck’s outward appearance would have him imagine. There was no tang of adrenaline. That should have been a warning. Chuck was strangely calm for a bite addict.

Then Chuck twisted. Fangs gouged flesh and mid-swallow Spike was hit with a shock of pain. “Motherfuck!” He pushed away from the kid and got another jolt for his trouble. “Hold still!” He grasped his head. “Could you just hold still?”

When the spots cleared from in front of his eyes, Spike found Chuck was staring at him thoughtfully. Blood was soaking the guy’s white t-shirt under his leather jacket. He hadn’t done a thing to stop the bleeding from his neck. “I like a little pain,” Chuck said. “Is that some kind of problem for you?”

That was a question with no good answer. “I get migraines,” he said. “Give us a few, and we’ll start over.”

Chuck was smiling. “Hit me,” he said.

“No.” Spike glared at the git from under his own hand. “I’m not here to play some kinky game with you. Well, I suppose, I am, but only one kinky game. You pay you get bit. That’s the deal.”

“You can’t hurt me, can you? Is it a spell? A witch’s curse?”

“Piss off. I don’t need this.” Spike got to his feet.

He was shocked to find Chuck had moved directly into his path. “No. I don’t think so. I think you’re going to stay. And I think you’re going to get on your knees.”

Spike pulled back to sneer at the kid and saw he’d drawn a gun. “Better check your Anne Rice novels, kid. Those don’t scare us creatures of the night.” He stepped around Chuck, easily, coat swirling in his wake.

He heard two shots fire and fell before he realized he’d been shot. Then the pain woke up. Right knee, left shin. He grabbed the blood-soaked denim over his knee first, feeling the crumbled remains of his kneecap.

“Fuck. You crazy fuck!”

Chuck walked past him to the alleyway door, where he made sure it was wedged tightly closed. He kept his pistol out in one hand the entire time.

“You don’t just shoot a bloke!” Spike checked his injuries and then unconsciously raised his hand to his mouth to lick the blood. “Are you completely barmy? Even in Sunnyhell people react to gunshots.”

“Not so much in my experience,” Chuck said. He looked down at Spike. “Now let’s see you on your knees.”

Spike felt his gut squeeze into a tiny ball as he realized he couldn’t fight back, and he couldn’t run. He tried to get up on his left leg, but the bone felt like it was splintering to the hip when weight hit it. His right wasn’t going anywhere. He shifted his weight onto his left hip and raised his middle finger at Chuck.

“Right,” said Chuck, and he backhanded Spike with his pistol.

Spike found himself with both palms on the filthy floor. He would have to crawl to escape. He bit back his pride and started crawling. He could still move faster than a human, and there was another door on the far side of the warehouse.

Crawling faster than a human could was still not as fast as a human on two legs. Chuck easily overtook him and grabbed his right leg, which was dragging since he couldn’t use that knee.

Chuck simply had to pull and twist, and Spike cried out. He kicked, and was rewarded with both a shot of red-hot pain in his left shin and an explosion in the back of his skull from the chip.

“You know, I like a little pain,” Chuck said, “But you must like a LOT of pain, because I’m not asking for much.” He wrenched Spike’s leg the other way and there was an unmistakable grinding sound of bone against bone. “How is this better than just getting on your knees? You are a whore, aren’t you?”

Spike had been trying his hardest to twist from the man’s grip and move away. But when he asked that question, it was like a stake in the heart. He stopped. He gritted his teeth. “What do you want?”

“I want you on your knees.”

Spike picked himself up on his elbows and turned to look at the man, hoping to convey in sheer expression how sadistic a request that was, considering the state of his right knee.

Chuck’s eyes were half-lidded, and his lower lip wet with saliva. He knew.

“I kneel,” Spike said, “on my broken knees; that’s it. You pay me and leave.”

“Nuh.” Chuck licked his lips. “I paid for a suck-job. Now get up and do it. Whore.”

Spike clenched a fist against the cold concrete. He turned on his hip to face Chuck, who was standing with his legs apart, his gun resting lovingly against his groin – and how was that a safe habit to get into with a gun?

“That’s it,” Chuck said, his voice sibilant.

Spike got his left knee under him and lifted his weight onto it, though his right leg screamed at being bent at all. His face ticked with rage. He straightened, as much as he could, gritting his teeth hard and grunting as he forced his right leg to bend under him. He glared up at Chuck’s satisfied face and tested his weight.

“Now,” Chuck said.

Spike threw himself at the kid, everything he had, in a punch aimed for his jaw.

Spike knew he only had one shot. The pain would knock him out, but if he was lucky not before he knocked out Chuck.

He had no way of knowing if he was successful. The combined pain of a all-out chip fire and the sudden hard weight on his shot-up legs caused his vision to white out, his hearing to blank, and his world to reduce to nothing but the reception of pain.

He came to on his back. Little white dots swam on the edges of his vision and he was looking at support beams and corrugated tin.

“That was stupid,” said a voice Spike was growing to hate. Did the kid have to even sound kind of soft?

Spike shook his head. “Yeah,” he tried to laugh. “Never been one for the real thought-out plans.”

Chuck stepped into his vision, looming over him now, his black hair hanging in his face. He stepped over Spike’s hip and squatted down, straddling him. Spike felt the rough denim of his jeans against his bare skin. His shirt had been removed.

Chuck had a wooden stake in one hand. He pressed it point-first over Spike’s heart, and then raised it over his head. “I can leave no evidence behind. Or are you going to start doing what you’re told?”

Spike wanted to tell him off: tell him he’d never done what he was told and now wasn’t the time to start. He rocked his head against the gritty floor. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

“I think I made that clear.”

Just say yes just say yes. The kid was going to do it. He could see it in his eyes. And Spike couldn’t risk another chip-fire. His eyes were still tearing from the last one and there was the fear, ever present, that the next firing would be the one to finally scramble his brains. Just say yes. He opened his mouth and it felt like the words stuck in his throat. “Can’t do it, mate. Pride.”

“Okay. Then you die.”

Spike threw his hand in the way. The stake pierced his palm at a shallow angle from just below the fingers to the heel of the hand. It hurt. God, wood hurt.

“So you don’t want to die,” said Chuck, yanking his stake out of Spike’s hand. Spike felt each splinter that stayed behind or ripped free. “What was your other option? There’s only two, genius.”

“I’ll do it,” Spike said. “Yeah. Don’t kill me. Just… I’ll do it. And you’ll leave me, yeah?”

“Now you’re talking sensibly.” Chuck swung his leg over Spike, letting his weight fall temporarily on the vampire’s middle as he took to his feet again. “So let’s see some kneeling already!”

Spike rolled onto his side. He blinked away the pain. Just do it, he thought. Pride isn’t worth dying for.  
Left knee first, easy. Right knee, agony, and the added stinging burn now when he tried to use his left hand for support. But he did it, he got his broken body into a kneeling position and looked up at the loathsome, young, scrawny punk. When he could talk without gasping, he asked, “Now what?”

Chuck grabbed Spike’s belt and tucked his stake into Spike’s waistband. “For safekeeping,” he said. “Now suck me.”

Spike closed his eyes. His hands felt like lead, but somehow he raised them. His dominant hand was in a world of hurt and didn’t want to close, so he had to do most everything with the other and just use it to brace against.

“That’s it,” Chuck said.

He sounded like he might drool on him.

Spike jerked the zipper down a little harder than necessary. The kid wore white BVDs. How attractive. He hooked the waistband with one finger and yanked it down. The kid’s erection popped out, fat and weeping, it wobbled against the pushed-down elastic.

Stake. Death. Brain damage. Why, again, was he avoiding these things? A circumcised penis was staring him in the eye. He tried to get some moisture into his mouth.

“Come on. You need me to draw a diagram? Suck on it!”

“I do this; you walk out of here. You don’t try to kill me. You don’t ask for anything else.” He ignored the prick bouncing in his face to meet his assailant’s eyes.

“That’s all I want,” Chuck said. “I’ll even give you your money.”

Keep the money, he wanted to say. But he didn’t. He leaned forward and opened his lips. It’s just skin, he thinks, and presses against the yielding tip. It’s just skin and he’s a vampire and supposedly above such things as shame. Above or below. The thinner skin of the shaft, next, and the tip is nudging the back of his mouth and his saliva glands are finally kicking in and making everything slippery. He tries to remember what feels good.

Buffy did this thing where she’d circle the tip with her tongue, flick over the slit and then… he does that.

Chuck grabbed the back of his head, tugging, forcing him to take it deeper. The bastard also oh-so-accidentally nudged his fucked-up knee with his boot. The pain made him cry out, which made his throat open, and then he was choking on cock. It hadn’t looked that big outside. Christ, why couldn’t he just do this? His mouth was swimming in saliva now and his throat constricted, tight, sore.

It was a mess, a slobbering mess, but Chuck fucked his face and kicked him in the knee and got off on it, groaning and thrusting harder with each stifled moan of pain until he was jerking arhythmically. Cum joined saliva and Spike felt like he could drown.

It’s not that vampires don’t need to breathe; they can’t suffocate, but the old panic triggers are still there, gripping your chest and flooding your brain until you remember. And Spike was always bad about remembering he didn’t need to breathe.

He spat and gasped and wiped his mouth on his arm and fell, shaking, back onto his hip. He didn’t look at Chuck.

“Well, that was terrible,” Chuck said. “But good enough not to die, I suppose.” There was a sound of a zipper going up, and Chuck walked away.

Spike closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax.

The chorus of aches and thoughts kept him from listening closely. He didn’t hear Chuck pick up the chunk of rebar, and didn’t notice him coming back. He heard the air displaced as the blow fell, and that was his only warning before the metal smashed into his left knee.

He howled twisted, only just stopping himself from grabbing for the man as blows began to rain down. He tried to block with his arms. Chuck was panting with effort, swinging again and again into his legs, his sides, his arms.

As suddenly as it started, the beating stopped. Chuck staggered away to lean against the wall and catch his wheezing breath.

“Wew! That took a bit out of me. Okay, vampire. Time for round two.”

There was a chuckle and footsteps approaching again. Spike was damn well paying attention now, but he didn’t know why. What could he do? What could he hope for?

Buffy. She’d come, wouldn’t she? Check on him? If he was gone too long. He tried to believe it.

He tried to pull himself away one last time.

“Come on, you know better than that.” Hands were on him, digging in to damaged tissues, pulling him, turning him.

He struggled and got a knee pressed into his throat while deft hands worked his belt off. “What’s the problem? You gave it up so good just a minute ago. You can’t sell yourself.” A huff and a pause as the belt was pulled free. “And then change your mind.” Now his flies were undone, and he was being rolled out of his jeans.

And Spike realized that no one was coming. No one would worry about him, not for days. Not him.

“Mmm. You’re pretty for a corpse, you know that?”

Spike was on his back again. He turned his cheek to the floor and tried not to see or feel. Chuck grabbed his wrist, brought it up. His damaged hand. He pulled it back. I can still pull away, bastard, he thought. There’s no law against that.

Chuck pulled out his gun again and pressed the barrel to Spike’s left wrist. “You lost your knees. Want to lose your hands?”

“You’re pathetic,” Spike said. “Getting off on my fuckin’ disability. I get this chip out; you’re going to die slow. I’ll do a full Angelus on you. Maybe even get the old bastard to come help out.”

“You’re the one who came here to be used,” Chuck reminded him, and took his left hand in a hard grasp, digging into the wounded palm until Spike had no choice but to open his fingers and feel Chuck’s hardening shaft drag against his ripped skin.


	3. hello_spikey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here it is: the third and final part. This was waaay harder than I anticipated to write. Hope it's not disappointing.

Dawn slammed every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen that morning. Many more than should have been required for her breakfast of toast and juice.

Buffy grimaced behind her cereal box. “What did the silverware drawer ever do to you?”

Dawn slammed a spoon into the counter. She yanked open the fridge and slammed jam down next to it with equal vehemence. “I’m tired of being lied to.”

“What did I do this time? And could you not take it out on anything expensive?”

“Not you. Spike. He said he’d come back. He said he’d talk to me.”

Buffy sighed. “I know Spike seems like a nice guy sometimes, but he is a soulless vampire. You have to expect the occasional lie and weasel-like behavior.”

Dawn looked a little calmer as she smeared jam on toast. “Well, aren’t you angry? I mean, he promised YOU he’d come back, and he never breaks a promise to the beauteous Buffy, shining center of his word.”

“I’m sure he just got caught up with a client or something and the sun came up.”

Dawn put the jam away like she was condemning it to solitary confinement. “If YOU were the one with a question to be answered, he’d come in broad daylight.”

“Look, Dawn… it’s nothing. Really. Spike’s biting people for money. He has this big hang-up about it, but it’s not that big of a deal.”

Dawn stood, the refrigerator door still open in front of her, gaping at her sister.

Buffy folded up the cereal box. “Xander’s going to be here any minute. Hurry up and finish eating.”

Toast forgotten, Dawn followed Buffy into the living room. “You’re PIMPING him?”

“Yes… no. It’s totally not like that!” Buffy picked up the bag with her Doublemeat uniform in it. “Now I’m working first shift today so tell Xander I can pick you up after school.”

“My god. No wonder he didn’t want to tell me. What did you do? Threaten to date him?”

Buffy frowned at her sister and was thankfully saved by Xander’s familiar horn honking in the driveway. “Go. You’ll be late.”

“This is way more important than school.”

“No, it isn’t.” Buffy shooed Dawn toward the door. “You want to talk to Spike about it, he’ll be here tonight like always.”

“He’d better be,” Dawn muttered, grabbing her backpack from the couch.

***

Spike awoke bloodless. It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed, being cold and empty, a corpse on a stone floor. He was sticky with congealed blood, leaning against that filthy, rat-infested sofa. He tried to sit up and his vision swam. His hip-bone hurt from pressing into the floor, but either way he tried to turn hurt worse. He looked at his hands, the stigmata on each of them – one a ragged slash from a stake, the other a neat bullet hole. Fuck. At least he was alone, now. Sunlight filtered in through myriad cracks and holes in the old building. He could get to the alley-door. Crawl there and then crawl along the shade-side of the alley… find some other place to hide the day away.

His hands stung like merry bastards as he pressed them to the gritty floor and tried to pull his useless legs forward. It made a gross sliding sound. He made it almost three inches when he felt a new, sharper pain, like his bones were dislocating all along their tortured length.

His legs were tied to the soddin’ couch. He stared at the ropes – dirty old nylon, and almost laughed. “Can’t a bloke have a break?” he asked, wincing at the desperation that echoed back at him. He started moving carefully, against the pain and injuries, to get at his own ankles. Anything that could be knotted could be un-knotted. He just had to… stay awake.

He hissed at a particularly painful throb in his left knee when he tried to bend the leg. The right had been shot out with a bullet, but the left was a mulched mess, swollen twice its proper size.

With a groan of metal, a swash of sunlight poured across the room. Spike scrambled back against the couch and then sank into a puddle of curses at all the newly-awakened hurts.

A long shadow ambled in. “Damn. You sure take a licking and keep on ticking.”

Chuck closed the door. He’d cleaned up and carried a Starbucks cup that filled the air with sharp coffee scent.

“How about a drink,” Spike said. He let the couch support his head and spoke mostly to the musty cushion. “Eh? For a man likes to be bit, you haven’t been very forthcoming with the red stuff.”

Chuck threw himself down on the couch, jostling Spike’s head away. “Relax. We’ve got all day today. I’m skipping class. Want to see how many of those stories they tell about vampires are true.”

Spike let his weight fall back on the floor. “Need blood, you dickless git. Can’t heal. Stay awake.”

He was almost beyond feeling it when said dickless git pressed a cross to his forearm. Spike watched it sizzle and smelled the unpleasant tang of cooking corpse.

He’d never felt so dead.

***

Buffy ended up having to take over part of another shift because someone didn’t show up – again. No wonder demons could feed on Doublemeat employees with impunity. People just expected them to not show up. And again her reputation was muddied with Dawn. Did the fates just crouch in wait for her to say ‘I won’t work late tonight’? A hurried call had been made to Xander, and then dinner arranged with Willow, and it was almost dusk when Buffy finally got home to find Dawn pacing the porch.

“He hasn’t come,” Dawn said. “He’s usually here by now.”

Buffy scratched her scalp. “Ugh. Just let me get into the shower and take an inch of this grease off.”

“Buffy! What if something happened?”

“He’s fine. He’s just being avoidy-vamp,” Buffy said.

But when she came out of her shower, smelling human again and also smelling the take-out chicken Willow had procured, she stopped to check her messages.

Buffy came downstairs with her hair still wet, clothes skewed from being rapidly put on. “Spike didn’t show at his last two appointments last night.”

She was met with a confused look from Willow and an “I told you so” glare from Dawn.

Xander and Anya were there, taking advantage of the last-minute fast food, and had eyes only for chicken.

Xander caught a sense of some awkwardness in the room. “Dead-boy junior fell through? Color me not surprised.”

“I’m going to go look for him,” Buffy said. “Something’s not right. He wouldn’t have just… not gone. He would have said something.”

“Maybe he was trying to say something when you were helping him blow me off,” Dawn said.

“Oh dear,” Willow bit her lip. “Guys? Please don’t fight. There’s chicken. And yummy artificial-tasting mashed potatoes.”

Buffy was pacing. “Will? Can you do a locater spell on Spike?”

Willow nodded very quickly. “Oh yeah, easily. Oh… you mean, now?” She looked forlornly at the breaded goodness on her plate.

“Please? I can’t eat until I know.”

Willow sighed and got up from the table. “I just need to gather a few things,” she said.

Xander waved a chicken leg. “We’re all concerned about Captain Peroxide all of a sudden? He’s a big vamp.”

“He’s a part of the team now and we respect that,” Anya countered. “Even formerly-evil former-demons are welcomed in the Scooby family.”

Buffy paced. “I just have a feeling something’s up. Maybe he’s dust. Maybe he’s at his crypt drinking and cursing my name. I Just want to know.”

“Maybe he got tired of you using him.” Dawn leaned back in her chair.

Anya perked up. “We’re using Spike for something? Is it economically viable?”

“And once again I have no idea how to take that,” Xander replied. “Mmm. Chicken.”

Xander was glad for an easily distracted fiancée and greasy food to keep himself from having to be involved with whatever was going down between the Summers sisters. Dawn was stalking after Buffy to the living room, where Willow was setting up her map of Sunnydale. “I notice you didn’t care where he was until he missed an ‘appointment’.”

“Dawn, please, not now.”

“No. It’s never ‘now’.”

“Shush,” Willow said. “Ah… there he is.”

Buffy only had to take a quick glance to recognize the warehouse district on the map. “Right,” she said, and grabbed her jacket and a stake. “I’ll go get Spike. Save me a wing.”

If he was just goofing off… Buffy buttoned her jacket as she strode down the street. She tucked her stake into her pocket. But why would he still be in the same place as his first appointment the night before? Did a pile of dust register as ‘him’ in a locator spell? Buffy bit her lips and tried to push down the feeling welling inside her that something bad had happened and it was somehow her fault.

***

The phone rang while Xander and Willow were cleaning up the mess from dinner and Anya and Dawn were settling down to watch TV.

“You want me to get that, Dawnie?” Willow called from over the sink.

“I’ve got it,” the teen answered sullenly. She kicked her way out of the pile of pillows she’d gathered for the night’s horror movie and picked up the phone on the fifth ring. “Summer’s residence.”

“Dawnie, get Xander.”

Dawn frowned. “Buffy? What, is something wrong?”

“Just put Xander on the phone. I need him to come get me.”

“You never tell me anything. Why should I just pass the phone off to someone who doesn’t live here?”

Buffy’s voice broke on the phone. “Because I can’t move him. Please. Get Xander.”

Twenty minutes later the whole gang was at the warehouse, crowding out of Xander’s car. Buffy stood at the door, waving them over, her pale arm a beacon against the dark brick.

Xander handed the flashlight to Dawn and picked up the blanket Buffy had asked him to bring. He stepped into the warehouse and at first he thought it was empty.

“Over here,” Buffy said, running over to a pile of rags by a sofa.

The pile of rags moved.

“Oh god,” Anya grabbed Xander’s arm. “We have to get him to a hospital.”

Xander took her hand and squeezed it. “He’s a vampire, Ahn. Not so much with the heartbeat and the insurance forms.” Xander stepped forward with the blanket and he and Buffy arranged to lift Spike onto it without so much as a word. They could work well together, when the situation merited.

Spike was in bad shape. So bad it took Xander a second look to realize he was naked.

A dazed Dawn – why didn’t they make her stay at home? – gathered up his clothes. They’d been left strewn across the room. Anya got the docs and the duster.

They had to arrange his limbs one at a time. There were multiple breaks. Xander could see why Buffy didn’t want to try moving him on her own. It was all business. Find two arms, two legs, and set them where they go. He picked up the edge of the blanket near the head and Buffy got the feet. “It’s kinda hard to hate deadboy junior here,” Xander said, “when I keep having to cart his beaten body someplace.”

“Not funny, Xan.”

“Who’s being funny?”

They laid him across the back seat. “Buffy, why don’t you walk Dawn back?”

Buffy nodded mutely. And Xander had to accept that he wouldn’t know for sure what happened until they got to the house.

“I think we should call the police,” Anya said. “Something’s out there that could get us all.”

Xander flexed his grip on the steering wheel and tried not to feel like he was transporting a corpse. “I suppose we could say he was beaten to death and the whole ‘death’ thing would come in handy, but Ahn, we don’t know what happened. And we moved the body.”

He grimaced, pulling out of the alleyway and onto the main road. Moving the body. He looked up into the rearview mirror and had a momentary panic that there was nothing in the back seat but a blood-stained blanket. He twisted his head around to check without mirrors. No, of course. There he was.

Moving the body.

Anya put her hand on his. “If something did that to Spike…”

“Maybe it was a human,” Xander said, and tasted bile at the words. “Though I kinda hope not.”

***

They brought him in to the living room and laid him out on the floor to bind the most serious wounds before they tried taking him up the stairs. Buffy insisted he be put in her bed.

“Soon as he’s taped together, Buff,” Xander said.

“Um… oh God. Dawnie? You shouldn’t be seeing this. Go… um… see if there’re more bandages in my room.” Willow fluttered her hands around, unsure what to do with them. “Maybe we need some sticks? Like splints? Oh! Dawnie! While you’re up there I have some good straight sticks. In a box in the closet labeled ‘wands’.”

“This is all my fault,” Buffy said. She stood to one side, her arms limp at her sides. “I sent him there. I posted his name and his face and sent him there. He had enemies. It must have been an ambush and it’s all my fault.”

Xander looked up as Anya handed him a roll of bandages. “A little less with the blame, a little more with the help.”

She knelt down as though lacking the strength to stand and took over wrapping gauze around Spike’s battered hand.

***

Spike woke with a start. There was blood nearby. His stomach tried to claw its way out of his body to get at it. He tried to move and awoke a thousand pains. He groaned.

A figure quickly moved to his side. “Don’t try to get up. Here, I have it right here.” An arm moved behind his shoulders and lifted him. A thick straw pressed to his lips.

He opened his eye – the left seemed pasted shut. The world out of his right was framed in white. A sports bottle was in front of him and a worried-looking Buffy. He smiled and let her guide the straw between his lips. He took a pull, then another as the rich flavor hit his tongue like rain on a starved plain. He couldn’t drink fast enough. When it was gone, he let the straw fall from his lips and gaped. “You got me human?”

“Willow said it’d help you heal better. I’ll get more.” She sat up, the mattress shifting with the loss of her weight.

“Buffy…” he raised his arm, feeling a thick knob of bone against a splint. He saw his hand wadded in white. She took it gently in hers and looked expectantly at him. Spike grinned. “Is there a single soddin’ inch of me isn’t covered in gauze?”

Tentatively she reached out and touched a bare patch on his right pectoral. It felt good, her warm fingertip gently stroking. He wished all of him could feel like that random inch. “We might have gotten a little carried away,” she said. “You were… Spike, you were jam. Who did this?”

He sank against the pillows. “Who do you think? A skinny. Weak. Human. Punk.” He rolled his eyes skyward. “God, he looked about thirty. Probably lives in his parent’s basement. But smart enough. He figured out all he had to do was keep me from runnin’. Been lucky so far, haven’t I? Not to run into someone that smart.”

Buffy shook her head. “It wasn’t… I… I shouldn’t…”

“Not your fault. Kid said it himself: I went there to get used. Can’t complain now, can I?”

Buffy dropped the bandaged hand like it was hot.

“Buffy!” He called after her as she ran from the room.

Willow reached the top of the stairs just as Buffy was sinking down the wall to sit by the closed bedroom door. “I heard talking… is he awake?”

Buffy ran a hand over her tear-streaked face. “It’s my fault. I knew… I guessed it was but now I know. I did this to him. Again.”

“What? No.” Willow knelt beside her friend. “No, you didn’t…” she bit her lip, wondering about that ‘again’ but choosing not to bring it up. “Hey. Did he drink the blood we had waiting? I’ll go get more. And maybe some hot tea. You want tea?”

“I don’t want tea. I want to stop feeling like this… like I’m horrible.”

“You stop that, missy. No one calls my friends ‘horrible.’ Now come on, help me get the tea.”

Willow pulled Buffy up by her arm and reluctantly she followed.

In the kitchen she paused at the knife-rack while Willow filled the tea kettle. “I was thinking we should call Tara,” Willow said. “I mean, Dawnie could call her. It’s just, she’s so much better at the healing magic. She might know a spell that works on vampires. Me, everything I do is, well, not so much with the undying people.” Willow turned from getting mugs out and frowned at Buffy. “Buffy?”

Buffy was turning the paring knife over in her hands, studying it carefully. She quickly put it down. “Just wondering if… slayer blood is supposed to be powerful.”

“Ew! No!” Willow snatched the knife off the counter and then, finding nothing to do with it, tossed it in the sink. “We will not be self-inflicting in the kitchen. It’s…” she waved a hand helplessly. “It’s unsanitary.”

“I know.” Buffy hugged herself. “I just…”

“You’re just setting this mug in the microwave and setting it for two minutes.” Willow pushed a cup of cold blood at her.

“Yeah,” Buffy said, sheepishly. “What time is it?”

“Just after noon. Don’t worry about anything. I’ve already arranged dinner and Xander’s picking Dawn up from school and I called in to the Doublemeat Palace for you.” She smiled brightly. “I pretended to be your dentist. You’ve had a serious tooth-accident.”

A tiny smile graced Buffy’s lips. “Thanks for not being my gynecologist.”

They loaded up a wicker tray with all the tea things and the blood.

Spike had pulled himself up almost to sitting in the bed, his half-bandaged face held high. “I knew the risks,” he said as soon as they’d stepped into the room. “Buffy. I knew the risk, okay? It’s the same chance I take every time I walk out there where there are more bloody humans than demons. So you can just stop beating yourself up over it.”

Willow went to the bedside table to clear room for the tray. She paused, a ceramic figurine in hand. “It was a human?”

“Just some punk,” Spike said, looking away.

“We got you more blood,” Buffy said, holding the mug out to him.

He raised both his bandaged hands in a helpless shrug.

“Straw. We forgot the straw!”

Willow rushed to the door. “I’m on it!”

Buffy sat on the edge of the bed. “Spike, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Don’t be. Like I said: I knew the risks.”

“But I didn’t.” She reached across to hold his wrist. “I didn’t. I… I still think of you as this big, strong, evil thing. Even after… after Glory, after… I didn’t think anyone could hurt you.”

He smiled. “Still think of me as the big bad, eh? ‘S nice.”

She took hold of both his hands. “No one is ever going to touch you again.”

“I think the various monsters of the hellmouth are going to take exception to that, luv, while I’m beating their brains in.”

“Straw!” Willow ran in, brandishing the straw before her like a relay race baton.

“Ta, luv.” Spike smirked while the two women battled to get the blood to him as quickly as possible. When they let him move away from the mug again, he chided, “I’m going to be nursed to death!”

“Not completely.” Buffy set the mug down on the tea-tray. “I’m going after that ‘Chuck’. Willow? You can keep an eye on him?”

“Sure. Um… who’s Chuck?”

At the same time, Spike stiffened. “Like hell you are!”

Buffy rubbed her hands on her jeans and stood, looking more determined than ever. “Chuck is the waste of flesh that did this. I’m going to deliver him a message.”

“Slayer, you will damn well leave my business to me,” Spike shouted, with more force than even he thought possible, given his condition.

More quietly, Willow said, “Buffy, um, we don’t do the hurting human people. There’s police.”

Buffy crossed the room to the closet. She opened the door and started rooting around inside. “You think the police have a statute on vampire abuse? Spike, you think you can take revenge when you can’t even stand?” She pulled out her good old ‘slayer’ bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Chuck and I are going to have a little talk.”

The bag swung into the doorjamb as she exited and Spike and Willow were left in her wake, hearing her steady march out the front door.

“She won’t even know where to find him,” Willow said.

Spike sighed. “She might. She’s at least contacted him once. Bloody hell.” He hit his head against the headboard. “She’s gonna get herself hurt, and I can’t even follow. Some big bad I am.”

“Y…you’re still bad,” Willow offered.

“Thanks, but I’m bloody useless. Now the slayer knows it as well as I do.”

Willow fidgeted awkwardly with the tea-things. “I’ll go… I’ll go call Tara.”

***

Buffy kicked in the door of the apartment. It caught on two chain locks before breaking and falling over. No, it hadn’t been hard to track Chuck down at all. He sat at a card-table in the dinky little depression-era apartment he rented near the university. He was in his underwear, cleaning his gun.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Buffy tossed her bag into the room. “Should I have knocked?”

Chuck jumped out of his chair and aimed his still disassembled gun at her. “What the… who are you?”

“I’m Buffy the vamp…” she stopped herself, closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. “Spike’s friend. You remember Spike?”

“Shit. Wait. He was still moving when I left him.”

“Lucky for you.” Buffy pulled a knife out of her pocket and hefted its weight. “Put the gun down.”

“What? You… you crazy bitch! You can’t just waltz in here…”

The knife landed in the wall just above his hand and wobbled a little with the impact. Buffy drew another out. “You were saying? I have lots of these.”

He hastily tossed the gun on the table and held his hands out wide, open. “Come on, it’s not like he was human.”

She kicked over the table between them and advanced until Chuck was pressing himself against the wall. “I’m beginning to think you aren’t,” she said. “And I kill things that aren’t human.”

“Jesusfuckingchrist!” Chuck held his hands up. “Love of god. I… come on! What do you want? The money? I’ll pay you the money. Double. I didn’t… I was going to pay. He just pissed me off when he refused to blow me.”

Buffy drove the knife in her hand into the wall right next to Chuck’s ear and watched his face scrunch up in fear. He was shaking, cringing, pathetic, and she felt anger welling up in her, making her want to see blood and hear bones break. She pulled her fist back.

“Please… come on… don’t… please…” he started to cry.

She punched him and he howled, crumpling to the ground, his hands in front of his face. She felt sick, looking at him. “You’re pathetic,” she said. “Spike wouldn’t have even eaten you before the chip. He wouldn’t have looked at you.”

Through the lattice of his fingers, Chuck watched her fearfully. She stood, fist still clenched, undecided on what to do.

“It wasn’t rape,” Chuck said. “He didn’t say no… at the end. I made sure he didn’t.”

Her eyes widened and jaw dropped and Chuck realized then that perhaps he’d chosen the wrong defense tack.

Buffy landed a kick in his gut so hard he felt his spine touch her boot. Then, while he struggled to get breath back in his lungs, she turned and kicked the up-ended table. Then she threw the cushions off his couch and kicked the coffee-table. Nothing felt violent enough. She panted and glared at the pathetic figure crawling toward the kitchenette.

She walked over and grabbed the gun laying among the refuse from the table. “You have more of these?” she asked.

“Jesus you’re some kind of monster,” he said.

“Answer me!” She kicked the wall just in front of his head. Plaster exploded around her boot.

He nodded and pointed back toward the door.

She followed his arm and found a gun cabinet by the TV. She smashed the glass and pulled out two riffles and another pistol. “Right. I’m taking these.” She stuffed them in her slayer satchel, and, thinking about it, put all the bullets in too. She hoisted the bag on her shoulder and walked back to the young man. “And if you follow me, or call the police on me, you’ll discover there are far scarier things in the world than vampires.”

She kicked the table once more for emphasis and stormed out of the apartment building, clutching her bag tightly. She shook all over: from fear, from adrenaline, from repressed rage. All the way to the docks she kept expecting someone to call after her, stop her, arrest her. But she made it to the water. She crawled through the barrels and crates by the shore until she found a secluded spot to open her bag and pitch Chuck’s weapons into the drink.

It was getting dark by the time she got home, feeling like she’d just gotten off a roller coaster. She found Willow and Xander and Anya and Tara all in the dinning room, finishing off a pizza. Dawn was sitting next to Spike, and it was a contest which of them was more anxious-looking when Buffy came into the room.

“Dawnie, leave us alone a minute?”

Spike shuffled back up to fully seated – taking advantage of a day’s worth of healing. He could smell the fight on the slayer. Fear/adrenaline/energy. She paced, not talking for a while after the door was closed.

“Did you kill him?”

She shook her head.

“Good, that. You couldn’t come back from that. Couldn’t undo it.”

Buffy threw her hands up. “I beat him up a little and took his guns.”

“Very sweet, you protecting my honor and all, but I told you, it’s my business. I’ll take care of it.”

“How? Hire an assassin? Where is that better than me killing him?”

“The not being you part. Don't think I fancy visiting you in jail. 'Sides, got blood on my hands, already. Plenty of it. Little more won’t hurt.”

She stared at him. He was looking at her sweetly, his one eye covered with gauze made him look cutely disheveled. Yet he was a mass-murderer. And he kept reminding her. Buffy shook her head again. Part of her wanted to hug him, and part of her wanted to leave the room and never come back.

She gave in to the first part. Her knee sank into the mattress as she lowered her head to his chest. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Bandage-covered, splinted arms bent around her awkwardly. “’S okay, Buffy. No one does.”

She felt his chest expand and fall under her – breathing. Her humanish vampire. She rubbed her cheek against the one bare spot on his chest. “When did you stop hitting back?”

He huffed. “Never! Even with the chip, I did what I could. I laid into that git! Nearly blew the back of my head off!”

She sat up to look him in the eye. “No, I mean me. When did you stop hitting me?”

His expression softened. “Hasn’t been any point, has there? You beat me, luv. You defeated me once and for all in that building we wrecked.” She felt the rasp of bandages as he brushed a lock of hair back from her cheek. “Couldn’t even think of hurting you now.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes you can be so sweet I wonder if I deserve you.”

“And other times I’m a right bastard,” he smiled. “How about getting some of these extraneous bandages off, eh? Nothing busted in my face, that I can feel. Sick of the soddin’ world being half white.”

She nodded and started feeling for the end of the bandage. “It’s over. The biting thing, I mean. I won’t ask you to do it anymore.”

“Can’t say I’m not relieved.”

She rolled bandage off his face, under his chin, and he lifted his head away from the pillow so she could get at the back. “You should have said no.”

“Never been good at doing what I should.”

The wad of bandages in her hands grew as his face was revealed, all the most battered side of it, purple and red and yellow, but the swelling around the eye was down, a sliver of glittering blue peering out at her as she ran her hand carefully down his mottled cheek.

He winced. She pulled her hand away. “Sorry.”

“No, luv. ‘S fine. Imagine I’ve looked better.”

Her lips were soft and tentative, a butterfly’s wing on his cheek, then his forehead, then the side of his eye. He turned and met her lips with his. A pressing, a forgiving kiss.

“I want you to bite me,” she said.

His eyes widened – even the swollen left eye opened almost half-way.

“I mean it. Slayer’s blood is supposed to be, like, powerful, right? I want you to bite me.”

“No.”

“Why not? I’d, you know, bleed into a cup, but I’m afraid I’d do it wrong and end up scarred for life or bleeding to death.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to think of you that way.”

“What way?”

“Like food.”

He looked at her so seriously she had to laugh. “Like you could ever think of me as anything but ‘Slayer’.”

“You’re a lot more than that,” he said, lowering his brows. "You're... amazing. Strong. You're Buffy."

She kissed him again. “’I don’t deserve you’ is winning against ‘right bastard’. In fact, ‘right bastard’ is getting his ass kicked.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll be back. He’s a survivor.” He ran a bandaged forearm up and down her shoulder. “How about getting some more of the cotton swaddling off me? ‘M not a china doll.”

She nodded and started feeling along his elbow for the bandage end. “So, when I finish, will you bite me?”

“I don’t bite on command, luv. Not any more. Remember?”

She stiffened, fingers freezing mid-untying. “I… I…”

He pushed himself up and kissed her cheek. “Easy. I just mean I want to wait until I can hold you, yeah? We got time. I’m not going anywhere.”

Task forgotten, she laid her cheek against his and cried. He held her as best he could and kissed her hot tears. “’S okay, pet. ‘S okay. It’s over, innit? Sh. ‘S okay.”

END

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by dreamsofspike on February 8, 2007.
> 
> "Early Season Six, Buffy is having money troubles...Spike comes to her and offers to help...She doesn't want him to steal or do anything illegal to help provide money, but she remembers the vampire bite-whores Riley went to see, and comes up with an idea. (For the purposes of this challenge, Spike's chip doesn't fire if the person wants to be bitten, due to it being pleasure for them more than pain) Buffy begins to act as Spike's "pimp" so to speak, and he is not actively, vehemently against the idea, but he's not exactly thrilled with it either -- but he'll do anything for her.Their relationship should have very dom/sub overtones, without being too dark...but it should be clear that Buffy is the one in control of the situation...Spike does what he does to please and help her, but he doesn't really like it...She may use some forms of emotional blackmail/manipulation, etc., to get him to keep going along with it, but not outright physical abuse...
> 
> Anyways (this is a kinda long challenge, huh?) one of Spike's customers realizes he can't fight back, and Spike is brutally attacked, beaten and sexually assaulted (customer may be male or female).  
> Buffy finds him and takes him home, takes care of him -- I want to see lots of hurt/comfort sort of bonding, she feels bad for taking advantage of him the way she has, and does her best to make it up to him, eventually claiming him as her own, not to be used by anyone else anymore -- and then, she goes and finds the evil customer and avenges her vampire. Anyone up for this challenge? ;P"
> 
> Claimed by xheartrockx on July 16, 2007.


End file.
